Please click here to listen to Episode 85 of the Minutes on Growth Podcast
Hi Soul-Friends,
It’s Tannaz Hosseinpour and welcome to another short solo episode of Minutes on Growth.
Recently someone asked me why they’re always anticipating worst case scenarios, so I thought I’d briefly talk about how the mind works.
To start if you too find yourself in a similar situation, I would suggest you begin by asking yourself: what will happen if the worst case scenario happens? how will you react to it? remember, our reactions can reveal a lot of our subconscious fears and beliefs.
Then ask yourself if there is a small part of you that desires that reaction? Yes you heard that right – what part of you secretly wants that reaction? What part of you feels familiar wth the chaos? In other words, when the worst case scenario happens, is there a part of you that thinks to itself ” I knew it or I told you so” ? This is one way our mind gives us a false sense of control over outcomes.
You see, our minds job is to keep us safe, and safe means not disrupting the status quo, and not creating change.
So for example, if I have this subconscious belief that all men cheat, then my mind will go above and beyond to validate that belief for me – so it will actively look for and entertain men who cheat to prove to me “see I told you so!”
Or if I think that it’s extremely hard to make money, then I might automatically be dismissive of any business opportunities that feel easy, and instead will choose to actively look for and entertain the careers that validate my belief and that feel difficult. After all, the critic in our mind never wants to be wrong.
The same applies to worst case scenarios – when I’m entertaining a worst case scenario, I am subconsciously entertaining a limiting belief that my mind wants to validate. My soul ends up hiding behind these beliefs and starts to mistake the beliefs with the truth. Remember our experience of reality is based on our beliefs, thoughts , opinions and perceptions, so naturally, by entertaining these scenarios, our current experience of reality is altered to match and validate them.
Whenever I fall into a slippery slope of what ifs, my spiritual teacher always asks me “Is this your soul speaking or are you wearing your negatively biased glasses today?”
& 99.9% of the time its the foggy glasses I’m wearing.. I’m seeing the situation through them, and when we can’t see clearly, the mind starts to make assumptions.
This isn’t to scare you into never thinking negatively, but rather through this awareness to give you control back over your life. Once you have awareness of how the mind works, and how our experiences are shaped, we recognize that we are in the driver’s seat of our own life. As William Henley beautifully wrote in Invictus, We become the master of our fate and the captain of our soul.
So the next time you find yourself, entertaining the worst case scenario, ask yourself what is the story underneath it? Then courageously investigate it without self-judgment.
Sending you lots of love,
Speak Soon
Minutes on Growth 